Inside SAP's Skunkworks as It Takes Aim at Oracle

POTSDAM, Germany—Hasso Plattner, who 20 years ago designed a computer program that supercharged SAP AG's growth, has been pursuing another breakthrough that could determine the software giant's fate.

Now SAP's chairman, the 68-year-old engineer is trying to take advantage of cheaper memory chips in servers to speed up complex business calculations and allow companies to do in seconds what currently can take hours or days. The aim is...